Prompt poem (four)

(What will you do with a scrap of paper, a sharpened pencil, and the moon?)


My prison window shows a patch of sky,
So every night I draw a picture of the moon.

Shape after shape, marching on the wall,
They grow, then wane, then swell to full again.

New-moon nights, I draw a patch of black,
Scribbled to reveal the stonework underneath.
Full moon is a blind white eye,
Gibbous a cut potato.
Crescent moon is a knife.

After a few months, I stop drawing shapes.
Instead I write moon-words, one each night:
Pearl, pregnant, slab, sickle, thumbnail, coal.
Then back:
Slash, feral, howl, afraid, astonished.

Word by word, I limn the poem of sky.
Of my prison. Of my guilt. Of my missed oblivion.

Prompt poem (three)

(The prompt for this one: Remember your voice.)

Here in space,
nobody can hear you do much of anything.

Scream, certainly --
which is what you do the first few days.
Or weep, or moan, or curse your fate,
ringing the full changes on profanity
in several half-remembered languages.

Finally, you get used to the quiet.
You start hearing the subtle difference
between the radiant hush of the stars
and the muteness of your drifting body.

At last you find peace. Or perhaps
a simple acquiescence.
You stopped screaming long ago.

You turn like the moon,
facing sun, then shadow,
then sun again.

Your gloved fingers eclipse the Earth,
silhouetted on vacant blue.

You close your eyes and drift through silence.

Here in space, nobody can hear you pray.

Prompt poem too

(Another prompt from Facebook: "Wishing for night")


It will come at last:
this sweet cessation, this tiny, vagrant death,
this rambling through dim fields of dream.

It will come again.
And end far, far too soon
when light puddles the horizon:

this daily burning, this uncouth clarity,
this louche, foul revenant we fled in sleep:
the soul's eclipse, our fragile benediction.

Prompt poem

(For a friend's poetry prompt Facebook page. The prompt: "The moon slips its mooring and drifts away.")


The moon has fallen into the pond behind the garden.
I row out to where it bobs,
Luminous, tangled in lilies, soiled with duckweed.

It's too big to fit in my boat --
An awkward shape, and much too heavy,
And the boat in any case too leaky. And so

I leave it there, another lost regret,
Like last winter's fallen stars,
Left melting through the snow.

Another fountain pen poem

We never found the Island,
Though we coasted up and down the trades
For a year, then two -- or five? I don't remember.
In the end, it didn't matter.
The voyage had become its own redemption.

The crew -- ex-pirates all -- were disappointed
To miss the promised treasure. But in time they grew
Content, whiling away the windy, blue-sky days
In hoisting and lowering sails, knotting ropes, and dropping
Anchor at every likely landfall,
Exploring, then taking on fresh food and
Drink, all the while singing their wild,
Monotonous chanteys. Silver's parrot
Squawked in five new currencies. The apple barrel
Emptied, and was refilled with pineapples,
Mangoes and avocados. Doctor Livesey tamed
A young Brazilian sloth, which the crew promptly
Debauched. At last, we had all but half-forgotten
The original Island. We sailed from habit, until
Teredos bored clear through the hull
And we careened the old "Hispaniola"
Near Port-Of-Spain, under a cloud of
Wheeling, arrogant gulls.
The Squire bought a dock-side tavern, and old Silver ran it
With his dark-skinned wife, helped by my mother,
Who was glad to leave the Admiral Benbow
For sun and sea and margaritas.

And so we never found it,
That ink-drawn island from a dead man's chest.
Perhaps it was only old Flint's pirate fancy,
As he lay dying so many long years gone, of rum
And wickedness in Savannah. Perhaps not. But I leave the copied map
To you, as the frontispiece
Of this slim volume of my land-bound memoirs:
"Treasure: a Cabin-Boy's Adventure".

Fountain pen poem

Under apples in autumn,
Under persimmons in December,
Under lilacs in paradise,
Under roses at our final wedding.

Beside the bed at midnight,
Under the window on the moonlit lawn,
Beside myself with anger,
Over the roof, and tumbling toward the moon.

Here we see the answers.
Here we see the reasons.
Here our needs are taken into account.
Here we find the only thing that matters --

Which was also the the only thing we asked for
Since we had no clue what else might be on offer.

Who here has dared to question the moon?
Who has bathed in the starlight?
Who explores the fronded depths of the sea?
Who has dreamed of dreaming in the temple?

None here can hope to find this apocalypse.
None here can hope to survive this termination,
Or to understand its secret portents --
The snow-slurred deer tracks on the moonlit lawn,
And a sudden, unforeseen irruption
Of snowy owls.